Identify France Napoleon Forgery

I am striving to identify what I am 99% confident to be a forgery. As part of a France collection for sale at an auction, the stamp at left below is stated to be the Napoleon 1 Fr official reprint, 1862. (Yvert 18d / Scott 21c).
(The stamp on the right is a certified authentic stamp 'stolen' from ebay for reference). The differences are plentiful and obvious.



I have informed the seller I believe this to be a fake, however with no well argumented response. So I want to investigate myself, first of all I want to make a conclusion it is a forgery - and even better if it is possible to find out which forger made this spesific forgery.

I am confident I have seen a website with several different forgeries of the Napoleon issues before, but I am not able to find it again. Can anyone help me?

Blaamand, the paper looks awfully modern to me. I doubt it is made by one from the old guard.

Here is another reprint - one in a different shade:

Classical stamps - thanks for your input. Yepp, it's a very bad forgery, so I doubt it's done by any off the 'good-old' forgers like Fournier or Speratti.
I believe your stamp is an authentic reprint, Yvert 18d?

I have compared the suspect stamp with several other certified reprints, and all observations point to that the stamp is a forgery, I am now 100% certain.
There are loads of differences, like the overall finnish and color, paper, printing quality and details in necklines, side and corner ornaments, letters, outer frameline, wavy background. Also very apparent differences in the execution of the eyes, ears, beard and neck-cut-off. All certified stamps I have seen have 88 nicely engraved pearls around the medallion, the fake has only 85 badly done pearls.

Still I struggle to convince the seller....

Can anybody share some more light about this forgery?

I would say that this is a reproduction of a well-documented early forgery. I say it is a reproduction because of the paper. Other than that, the features match one of the forgeries (I believe it is documented in Earée's Album Weeds).

One of the key features of this particular forgery is the 85 pearls you noted. If you don't have the patience to count 85 pearls, the alternate method is to note the side ornaments in the bottom half. In there are 3 outward turns, instead of the 4 outward turns in the genuine.

khj - Thanks a lot, mate. Sorry I overlooked your reply until now.

I agree with all you write, thanks for the info on the album weeds, I'll check it up!
Nice one about the the side ornaments 3 versus 4, didn't know that one.

Anyway, the seller has finally agreed with me that this is a reproduction/fake - so the object will be modified for the auction.

Jon

200% is a fake ! And a very bad one ! In the original the thickness of the letters is regular. Have a eye at the bottom the difference between letter "N" and "C" is so obvious.
I didn't count the pearls you mentioned but it reminds me the old catalogues where stamps were re-designed (no photocopy at thoses times). So it might be a scan of one of those old albums ?

I had this link : http://timbres-de-france.clicforum....eon-n-18.htm
A french blog where the same stamp is treated as a forgery, and not as a reprint.